


at gaixia in twilight

by moonfishes



Category: SNH48, THE9 (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet, F/F, Historical References, Historical Roleplay, Identity Issues, Mid-filming, Roleplay, Under-negotiated Kink, Vaginal Fingering, sun rui's hero complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonfishes/pseuds/moonfishes
Summary: In which Yu Shuxin crawls her way into a hegemon-king's heart.
Relationships: Sun Rui/Yu Shuxin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Girl Group Jukebox - Mixtape Round





	at gaixia in twilight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [punkrightnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrightnow/gifts).



> Surprise, bitch!
> 
> Very much inspired by Ambush On All Sides 2 (and, in turn, its own inspiration: the song of Gaixia/the pipa piece 'Ambush on ten sides'). There are a lot of historical references here, which I will include a link to after reveals are up.
> 
> cw: Brief mention of suicide, under-negotiated (het fantasy) kink--it's consensual, and both parties clearly want it, but there's the implication that they're drawing different things from it, making it a little messy.

> 力拔山兮氣蓋世，
> 
> 時不利兮騅不逝。
> 
> 騅不逝兮可奈何，
> 
> 虞兮虞兮奈若何！
> 
> \- 垓下歌  
  
---  
  
> _“My strength uprooted mountains,_
> 
> _My spirit overstepped the world;_
> 
> _But the times are against me,_
> 
> _And my horse can gallop no more_
> 
> _When he can gallop on more_
> 
> _What can I do?_
> 
> _And what is to become of Lady Yu?”_
> 
> _-Song of Gaixia_

Before she performs Ambush, Yu Shuxin comes up to her. “I’ve heard grand things about your performance,” she proclaims. “That it’s a modern retelling of the battle of Gaixia, that the set will be fancy, and that you guys will have cool historical costumes. Is it true? Will it be that grand?”

“Yes,” Sun Rui deadpans. “It’s going to be _so_ grand. They’re going to be dressing me as Xiang Yu in revealing armour—I’ll be taking down mountains with my exposed flesh.”

Shuxin giggles. She presses a cheek to the back of Sun Rui’s neck, pushing, until Sun Rui relents and leans back; less because she likes it, more because she knows Shuxin does. She likes to touch, and kiss, and hold hands. It’s almost a greedy thing, in the Changlong dorms—to seek affection from so many girls, to crave closeness and intimacy from every conversation. There’s a limit to how much people can give. 

But not with Yu Shuxin. Nobody gives affection as magnanimously as she does: completely unrestrained, without a care for the world. She’s doing it now: pulling Sun Rui even closer, circling her arms around Sun Rui’s waist, easy and sure. “Well,” she ruminates, “that’s nice, isn’t it?” 

“What is?”

“That you’re Xiang Yu.”

Sun Rui raises her eyebrows. She’s not sure if she’s following—by all accounts, Xiang Yu was a bloodthirsty, power-hungry tyrant. “It’s nice that I’m… a dead king?”

Shuxin laughs. “Not in that way, silly. I mean—conceptually. Metaphorically. If you’re Xiang Yu, it means I’m yours, then.”

Sun Rui cheeks flush red in embarrassment. What does that even _mean?_ “What are you talking about? How are you mine?” she asks. “I don’t recall annoying girls ever having a part in this historical epic. What role do _you_ play in Ambush?”

“Is it not obvious?”

Sun Rui scoffs. “Not at all. Tell me…where are you in this battle? A Han soldier? Liu Bang, charging through the lines? A downtrodden Chu soldier? Who are you in this tale, Yu Shuxin?”

Shuxin smiles. “Yu- _meiren,_ ” she says. “The beautiful Concubine Yu. That is me, is it not?”

—

After she performs Ambush, Shuxin tells her: “You did well.”

“We lost,” Sun Rui points out. It doesn’t hurt—she expected to lose. And if they won, it wouldn’t have been her victory anyways; it would have been Zhao Xiaotang’s, who’s flame burns much brighter and stronger than hers on stage. 

“That’s okay,” Shuxin says, confident. “You came first in your team, that’s what matters.” Then her expression changes into something more coy, more flirtatious—her eyelashes flutter deliberately, and she trails her fingers along the length of Sun Rui’s right arm. “And you have me to comfort you, if you need it. It is my duty, after all.”

“You’re still on this?” Sun Rui asks exasperatedly—but she’s not surprised. Of course _Yu Shuxin,_ the actress, would play this card. “That I’m some ancient king, and you’re my concubine, all because of Ambush—which I do know the story of, by the way, because I am obviously Jiaxing Road’s renowned scholar—and that we’re part of this tragic love story that ends in double-suicide?”

“You don’t have to view it tragically,” Shuxin protests. “You could focus on the love aspect. And their dedication to each other.” Then, more seriously, she adds: “Do you want me to stop?”

Shuxin’s touch burns through her hand. “No,” she admits. She—doesn't not like it. It's just something she's never experienced before.

“Okay,” Shuxin says. Her hand still rests on Sun Rui’s. Demure, waiting, standing by. Like a concubine, always ready for her king. “Okay.”

As the tale goes: Xiang Yu lost the war, and his concubine with it. She came to him in his last hours, and begged to die with him. At Gaixia—they died together, by the hand of his sword. 

—

And then, the modern tale—

“Would you have me?” Shuxin whispers, voice barely perceptible. “As Xiang Yu did, of his concubine?”

It’s midnight. Sun Rui is huddled in Shuxin’s bunk, still wrung out from the performance. She stills—caught between fear and want. Not knowing what to say. “How—how would Xiang Yu have you?” 

“He’d undress me first,” Shuxin says, guiding Sun Rui’s hands to the clasp of her bra. Mindlessly, she follows: mouth lingering on the curve of Shuxin’s neck, fingers skimming down the smooth expanse of her back. “He’d be more brazen than that,” Shuxin whispers. “He’d have his hands all over me, roaming every inch of my body, licking, teasing, biting—” she cuts off with a gasp as Sun Rui’s hands clench around her waist, “—and, _ah,_ I’d let him do it, fuck me as hard as he can—”

“ _Yu Shuxin,_ ” Sun Rui breathes, face hot, “who taught you to talk dirty like that?”

Shuxin’s eyelashes flutter. In the twilight, she looks every part of a concubine: lips bitten red, hair cascading down her back. “Is it not my duty to know how to please you, My Lord?”

“Xiang Yu would probably want his women to be docile and pleasant,” Sun Rui retorts. “Not loud, like—” she cuts herself off “—like—”

“Like me?” Shuxin’s voice is soft. “But I am the beautiful Concubine Yu, unchanged. Would he not like me just as I was before?”

The implication lingers in the air, and for the first time, Sun Rui fights the urge to lie to her. Shuxin is splayed out on the bed, half-naked; yet she is the one that feels bare, ambushed on all sides, forced to admit something she hasn’t quite admitted to herself: that Shuxin has crawled under her skin and taken root in the branches of her heart. 

Back at Jiaxing Road, there was a role she was meant to play: Rui-ge, team SII’s comedian, always ready to lighten up the atmosphere. Steadfast and strong. Her fans didn’t like her weak—they liked the jocular edge to her _dongbei_ accent, her _zhinan_ persona that stemmed from a certain kind of bluntness, the fantastical stories she told on stage, eclectic and loud. So she played it up for them, creating a barrier that was almost impenetrable. Aimed low to prevent disappointment. Fended off unhappiness with a well-timed laugh. 

It was only in front of her closest friends that she could just—let go a little, present herself as she was. But Shuxin has slipped right through that barrier in the course of a few months—quiet and quick, like a thief stealing into the night. What would her friends say about this? What would they say about the way Yu Shuxin has crawled her way into her heart? 

She misses them so painfully now—her little _laolaiqiao_ circle, so far away from Guangzhou. Closing her eyes, she imagines their responses in her head: Kong-jie would laugh, probably, and call her an emotionally repressed idiot. So would Xiao Qian. Duoduo and CC might nod in sympathy, and Da-ge—

Da-ge—

Da-ge would press a kiss to a forehead, and tell her to go forwards. _Sun Rui,_ she’d say. _You proud, stubborn lion. Tell her._

So she does. 

At Gaixia in twilight, the truth manifests. Just as Xiang Yu did—she discards her armour, faces Shuxin unclothed. “He would,” she says, but her voice trembles. She was never the stronger one, out of the two of them. “Go on, then. Continue.”

A beat. Then the veil lifts, and the sides of Shuxin’s mouth curl up. “Then,” she continues, breath hitching, “he’d go lower,” her fingers wrap around Sun Rui’s wrists, guiding her down, “and he’d press his fingers against me to find me wet, ready for him.”

 _Fuck,_ Sun Rui thinks. She follows, chasing the movement of Shuxin’s fingers down, down, down—until Shuxin gasps, a high breathy sound. “Then?” she asks, with as much courage as she can muster.

Shuxin shivers, clutching on tightly to the bedsheets. “Then,” she whispers, pushing herself against Sun Rui’s fingers— _god,_ her panties are wet all over— “he’d touch me, harder.”

“Like this?” Sun Rui asks, circling her fingers around the heat of Shuxin’s clit. She watches in fascination as Shuxin tips her head back and moans a _yes,_ revealing a delicious flush to her neck. “Keep going. Tell me, what else would he do?”

“Fuck me,” Shuxin moans. “He’d fuck me. With his mountain-toppling strength—” Sun Rui presses harder, and she breaks off with a cry, “—and his boundless might, he’d take me, _ah,_ pressed against his chest like this.”

“So quickly?” Sun Rui asks, but she’s already removing her fingers to pull against the elastic of Shuxin’s panties; Shuxin writhes at the lost friction, grinding against the bed. “Be patient. Surely there’s time to draw out pleasure.”

Shuxin laughs. “There is no time for patience,” she says, flushed, but her eyes are twinkling. “This is Gaixia, and he is ambushed on all sides.”

“And he would lie with his concubine instead of facing the enemy?”

“You forget,” Shuxin says, wicked, “that he would do anything of her bidding. Did he not charge into enemy territory to save her?” 

Before Gaixia, Concubine Yu had been captured by Han forces. Xiang Yu had taken his best soldiers and charged after her, desperate to take her back. Sun Rui is doing the same now—charging after Shuxin, following the rhythm she sets. The valley draws nearer; Gaixia beckons in the distance. “And what would she have him do, then?”

“She would have him move,” Shuxin says, guiding one of Sun Rui’s fingers in. Then, at the breach, uttered with sweet, gasping deference— _“My Lord.”_

Sun Rui thinks she understands what Shuxin is letting her have—what Shuxin is _giving_ her, plain and clear. But still she hesitates, caught between two worlds. Everything around her is amplified: the muffled footsteps in the corridor, the guttering of their air-con, DDD’s voice, petulant and whiny, drifting over from her room next door. All these sounds cast Gaixia adrift, disembodied. She _herself_ is disembodied; Xiang Yu exists only in her mind, crowned and deposed with only a word from Shuxin. 

How to be a king with no body? How to exist without the physical, as only a figment of one’s imagination? Past this, past tonight, past Gaixia, way past Ambush—Xiang Yu does not exist. She enjoys the thrill of it, the thrill of having control, of being at the top of the world—but after Gaixia, only Sun Rui is left, uncrowned. Will Shuxin still want her like that, cowed and unkingly? 

A hand reaches out to caress her cheek. “Don’t overthink it,” Shuxin whispers, voice soft. “You have me. You know it.”

Sun Rui shudders, both from her touch and her words: does Shuxin mean it in real life, or just in this moment, written in her script for a concubine bidding farewell to her king? _Do I,_ she wants to ask. _Do I have you always? Even when I’m—me? A girl, fragile to the touch?_ She moves to ask, but stops—Shuxin will tell her the truth. 

She’s not sure if she wants to hear it yet. So she nods: an acquiescence, for now. “I have you.”

Shuxin’s eyes crinkle. Her hand still rests on Sun Rui’s jaw. “And so, will My Lord move his fingers?”

Pushing away her thoughts, she complies. She curls her fingers, and Shuxin writhes helplessly onto them, making small _ah-ah_ noises as Sun Rui finds a rhythm that works, changing the pressure with each thrust of her fingers. “Please,” Shuxin begs. “Please, fuck me harder. I _need_ —like that,” she cries, as Sun Rui angles in deeper. “Right there—like that, _ah…”_ she trails off, moaning incoherently. 

“You like this, don’t you,” Sun Rui murmurs, wild with the knowledge that _she’s_ the one making Shuxin lose control. She brushes a finger against Shuxin’s clit, feeling her shudder all through her body. “You like it when I—when I’m this desperate king at the verge of death, who needs his concubine. Who will do everything that his concubine bids. That I— _Xiang Yu_ —can make you feel good in whatever way you see fit.”

“ _Yes._ ” Shuxin’s eyes are shut, and her face is flushed pink. She spreads her legs open wider, drawing Sun Rui closer to her. “My Lord, you—you make me feel so good.” Sun Rui closes her eyes at those words: Shuxin’s assurance, as well as the feel of slick moisture around her fingers makes her even more aware of her own wetness. 

“I want to come— _please,_ ” Shuxin begs. “Please, I need to—” she cuts herself off with a sharp cry as Sun Rui works her fingers in at a frantic staccato pulse: in-out-in-out, sixteenth notes that trip over the bar, chasing a quicker tempo by the minute, feeling Shuxin inch closer and closer to orgasm. “I’m going to, I’m—” she moans, “ _Sun Rui,_ I’m—I’m going to—” and she gasps again, final and sweet, clenching and pulsing onto Sun Rui’s fingers. 

“And you,” Shuxin says, after she’s caught her breath. “I’ll—”

“It’s okay.” Sun Rui removes her fingers. The wetness is unbearable, and her clit throbs at the sight and feel of it—but she doesn’t want to ruin the fantasy that they’ve constructed. Gaixia is already fading away, replaced with the industrial lights that saturate the Changlong dorm rooms; she doesn’t want to erode it any further. 

Shuxin frowns. Her face is flushed with sweat, and hair catches on the sides of her face. “But—”

“It’s _okay,_ ” Sun Rui repeats, firmly, and smiles at her, as cheerfully as she can. “That was good. I enjoyed that.”

Shuxin looks at her, searching. Sun Rui smiles again, hoping that she might be too tired to notice anything wrong, any cracks in her smile. “Okay,” Shuxin finally breathes out, still wrung out from pleasure. She smiles back at Sun Rui, sleepy and sated. “Thank you.”

“For what?” 

“For letting me have you,” Shuxin says, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. As if she had all of her just now, more than a role borne out of Ambush. Perhaps she would have, if Sun Rui had let her—if Sun Rui had the assurance—

But no. If there’s anything she’s learned from seven gruelling years as an SNH idol, it’s that wanting anything will inevitably lead to disappointment. So she untangles herself from Shuxin, ignoring her sleepy protests, and makes her way down the bunk bed ladder. “I’m, uh, going to—” she makes an aborted gesture in the direction of the door, “—go.”

Shuxin hums, already half asleep. “Okay.”

At the door, she pauses. She wants Shuxin desperately, too desperately to put into words. She just doesn’t know what part of her she can give. That she’s comfortable giving, and that Shuxin will want. So she closes the door, and walks out—facing the aftermath of the battle alone.


End file.
